Harper\'s Bazaar UK - 11.2019

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk November 2019 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 157

TALK ING POINTS

own invention, Fuller would light
up her costumes in an ever-
changing spectrum of colours to
create fluid, abstract designs that
mutated as she danced. While
there is no surviving film footage
of her in action, a series of ghostly
looking lithographs by Toulouse-
Lautrec and vibrant posters by the
painter Jules Chéret capture her
dynamic, serpentine movements.
Another avant-garde female performer was the Danish-born
Gertrude Barrison, whose bold form of expressionist dance cap-
tivated audiences at Vienna’s Cabaret Fledermaus following its
opening in 1907. Her quest to liberate herself from the rigorous
codes of ballet, which she claimed had ‘very little soul’, typified the
emancipated ethos of the Wiener Werkstatte – the co-operative of
forward-thinking designers who founded the cabaret with the
mission of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, or synthesis of the arts.
Visually, the group eschewed strict academic traditions in favour of
embracing the allure of the decorative and Expressionist move-
ments; the Viennese artist Fritz Zeymer’s brightly coloured, highly
ornamented drawings of Barrison on stage are a good
example of this more whimsical, folkloric style.
While Cabaret Fledermaus was not to stand the test of
time, closing in 1913 due to financial difficulties, it was in
many ways the spiritual antecedent of Zurich’s Cabaret
Voltaire (indeed, an Oskar Kokoschka play that had pre-
miered in the former went on to become a success in the

latter). Now remembered as the birthplace of Dadaism, Cabaret

Voltaire was established in 1916 as a refuge from the outside world

• a place where literature, poetry, art, theatre and dance could con-
  verge in an anarchic protest against the absurdity of war. One of its
  major innovations was the emergence of ‘sound poetry’, a form of
  verse recital that reduced human speech to mere noises and rhythms,
  perhaps echoing the inherent lack of logic in the violence that was
  raging across Europe at the time. Emmy Hennings, the cabaret’s
  impoverished co-founder and a poet herself, encapsulates its demo-
  cratic spirit. ‘She could talk at length about the verse of Apollinaire,
  and yet she was also a singer, a troubadour, a
  puppeteer...’ says Ostende. ‘For me, she epito-
  mises what cabaret is all about: the merging
  of high art with vernacular entertainment.’
  Despite this utopian ideal, the reality is
  that many women have, like Hennings, been
  excluded from the annals of so-called high
  culture, preventing us from making a proper
  assessment of their contribution to the history
  of art or showbusiness. The German painter
  and illustrator Jeanne Mammen, for example,
  deserves far greater international recognition
  for her lyrical, sensual depictions of women
  living and working in Berlin between the
  wars. Inspired by her visits to underground
  clubs, in particular those that welcomed gay
  and lesbian communities, Mammen’s works
  on paper have a carnivalesque feel, albeit with an undercurrent of
  sadness and alienation. She captured several of the Weimar
  Republic’s most radical female performers, including the dancer
  Valeska Gert, who caused a scandal by enacting the experience of
  orgasm live on stage in 1922.
  Countless other trailblazing women make appearances in the
  exhibition, including Josephine Baker, an entertainer who began
  her career in cabarets and went on to become the world’s first
  African-American film star. Her story, like that of so many of the
  performers featured in the show, is testament to the way informal,
  egalitarian spaces can foster creativity, collaboration and – aptly
  for the Barbican – the convergence of all forms of art.
  ‘Into the Night: Cabarets & Clubs in Modern Art’ is at the Barbican Art
  Gallery (www.barbican.org.uk) from 4 October to 19 January 2020. Join
  Harper’s Bazaar for a curator-led tour of the exhibition with Florence
  Ostende on 9 October at 6pm; for more information and to book tickets, visit
  http://www.bazaarartweek.co.uk.

Above: the first programme

of the Cabaret Fledermaus,

featuring the dancer Gertrude

Barrison, from 1907.

Left: a lithographic poster

by Jules Chéret

Far left:

‘Damenkneipe

(Women’s Club)’ by

Rudolf Schlichter

(about 1925). Near

left: ‘Tiller Girls’ by

Karl Hofer, from

the 1920s